


The Reverse Thief Job

by monsoon_moon



Category: Leverage
Genre: Get Together, Multi, Multiple Pov, figuring stuff out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-23 23:23:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17693147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsoon_moon/pseuds/monsoon_moon
Summary: The gang un-steal a very expensive violin.





	The Reverse Thief Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Penknife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/gifts).



> Dear Penknife, I wrote this for you and I hope that you like it.

“Hi Eliot,” Sophie calls and then laughs at the way Eliot swings around, narrowing his eyes at her then backing out of view when he seems to remember he's shirtless.

“What the hell, Hardison?” she hears him muttering pissily, “Why is Sophie's face on my very large very expensive wall-mounted tv? I told you no tech messing with my stuff.”

Hardison has frozen, spoon halfway to his mouth, dribbling milk onto Eliot's counters. Sophie counts quietly in her head. Three....two...

“You are getting milk all over my granite countertops, Hardison!”

“I've missed this,” Sophie says to Parker, sincerely meaning it. Parker smiles brightly back at her from where she's plonked in the middle cushion of what Sophie would bet her warehouse of treasures was a sofa that used to reside in Hardison's apartment.

“So,” Sophie continues, unable to help herself, “You're all,” she makes a vague circular motion with her hand and, when that fails to elicit a response from Parker beyond a head tilt, finishes “living together?”

“We live here now,” Parker confirms at the same time Eliot appears back in the room, wearing a shirt this time Sophie sees, and says, “They're not living here.”

“Hey!” Hardison calls from the sink where he's rinsing out a cloth. Eliot's been training him well. “I didn't carry my super comfortable sofa up six flights of stairs to be told I don't live here.”

“You didn't carry it up six flights of stairs,” Eliot grits, eyes on Sophie but she can tell his attention is not. “I carried it up six flights of stairs with Bob from 4A and Lenny from 2B.” He gives Sophie a look that she fondly refers to as his why me look. “I didn't speak to anyone in this building before,” he waves a hand around, encompassing Hardison who is still trying to eat his cereal and Parker who is ignoring them all and poking at the remote. Eliot pulls it out of her grasp. “Now people smile at me. Smile, Sophie. Bob asked me if I wanted to go for drinks!”

He sounds so delightfully outraged. Sophie really does miss them.

“So what's up?” Hardison asks, finally joining in. He jumps over the back of the sofa and lands next to Parker, making her bounce. She grins, delighted, and shoves at him. Sophie notes Eliot noting that Hardison left his unwashed bowl in the sink and hides a smile.

“I can't just call to say hi?” Sophie says, injecting a good amount of fake hurt to her tone.

“You can,” Hardison acknowledges, “but you haven't.”

“You know all of my tells,” Sophie says, tossing her hair. It's not true of course but it's fun to make Hardison raise an eyebrow and Eliot snort.

“No we don't,” Parker says, looking at the other two in case she's missing something. Sophie loves her most of all.

She tunes out while the boys placate Parker, glancing out of the hotel window, tracking Nate's movements around the pool. It's not hard, his suit is not exactly tasteful. Which is deliberate of course but still. A much more classily dressed man drops into step beside him and Sophie starts a different type of countdown in her head.

“Okay,” she says, turning back to the screen, cutting off whatever squabble Eliot and Parker are having, “I need a favour.”

All three pairs of eyes turn to her immediately, bright and attentive. There's something very reassuring in knowing that never changes.

“As you know, I am no longer in the game,” she says, and ignores Eliot's louder snort and Hardison's incredulous look. Parker merely nods. Seriously, she is Sophie's absolute favourite. “So,” she continues loudly, “I have an...old friend in need of a hand.” She leans closer to the screen and smiles. “How do you three feel about a holiday?”

 

She meets Nate at the hotel bar, exactly on time. As if there was ever any doubt.

“How did it go?” he asks, twisting a glass of coke and ice around on its edge. “How are the ...three?” He visibly hesitates and Sophie can hear the _kids_ his mouth wanted to say hovering in the air.

Sophie tilts herself so that she's angled towards the bartender and not Nate.

“They're living together,” Sophie says offhandedly and enjoys the choking noises from behind her. “Might even be sleeping together.” She's not actually sure about that point but it's worth it to hear someone stop to ask Nate if he needs to sit down.

“What,” Nate hisses, and Sophie can tell he's seconds away from blowing his own ruse. “How does that even work?”

“Perfectly,” Sophie replies without looking at him, then signals the bartender and asks for the froofiest cocktail she can think of off the top of her head.

There's a long pause from behind her and then “We're on holiday,” Nate reminds her like he isn't wearing a cheap white polyester suit and two dollar sunglasses.

“Well, let's make it fun then,” she mutters back , smiling when the bartender approaches and taking her drink.

She turns and spots the man from the poolside and starts moving into the best position from which to intercept him. She glances at his feet and feels almost sorry she's about to ruin such beautifully expensive shoes with a fifteen dollar waste of cheap alcohol. She catches a brief tilt to Nate's mouth and then she's on her way.

Fun indeed.

 

************

 

Glasgow is wet. And overcast. And cold. The plane ride was long and miserable and none of them managed longer than a ten minute nap.  Hardison is struggling to find something charitable to say but he's coming up blank. This is not his idea of fun. Eliot is glaring at the sky like it personally offended him (maybe it did, Hardison doesn't want to know even a quarter of Eliot's past but if anyone could have gotten in a fight with the sky, it'd be Eliot) and Parker...well. Parker is standing, eyes narrowed, three feet from someone who looks like they could be her younger sister, and glaring.

“Well, this explains a lot,” Hardison says.

Both Parker and mini-Parker turn and level identical pissy stares at him.

“Whoa now,” he says, hands up, backing away.

“How do you know Sophie?” Parker demands, jutting her chin out in a way that Hardison absolutely does not find adorable.

“How do you know Soph,” mini-Parker retorts.

“Huh,” Eliot says, finally getting with the programme.

“Right?” Hardison agrees, and settles back on his heels to watch.

 

Turns out mini-Parker is actually named Loula and she knows Sophie because Sophie was some sort of godmother. If godmothers took you out and taught you how to spot easy marks and how to pickpocket unsuspecting rich people.

The pickpocketing is where the problem lies. Well, really it's just the outright stealing but it started with the pickpocketing.

“So,” Eliot says slowly, “to summarize, you pickpocketed the Principal of your college, sneaked into his office when everyone was distracted and switched out a normal violin for this...”

“Maurin stradivarius,” Loula supplies

“And this was all possible because everyone was distracted with the security of another violin?”

“Il Cannone,” Loula says, starting to sound irritated at repeating herself.

“Yeah, that,” Eliot says, “because that's a more expensive violin that this violin?”

“They're both pretty high but Il Cannone is priceless,” Loula confirms.

“How much can a dusty old piece of wood be worth really?” Hardison asks, looking down a the very underwhelming instrument.

“Well preserved, a Stradivarius can sell for twelve million pounds,” Parker says in a clipped British accent accurate enough that Hardison startles. He looks from Parker back to the violin.

“And the other one? The cannon?” Hardison says slowly.

“”Il Cannone” Loula says, giving him a sour look, “Like I said, priceless,”

“Back to the task at hand,” Eliot says, clapping his hands to get all of their attention. “You stole this one because?”

Loula mutters something under her breath and definitely goes a little pink around the ears.

“I'm sorry?” Hardison says.

“I wanted to see if I could,” Loula says sulkily. Both Hardison and Eliot turn at the same time to look at Parker.

 _What_ she mouths back but Hardison knows her, he sees that softening in her face.

“You're a violinist?” Hardison hazards.

“I play,” Loula says “but no, not really.”

“I thought you were at music college?” Parker asks.

“Music and drama,” Loula says managing to sound both pissy and put out in one go. “I'm there for Contemporary Performance.”

Eliot looks at Hardison. Hardison shrugs back. He has no idea what that is and he is not asking.

“I really like my course,” Loula continues, voice low and not meeting their eyes. “I don't want to get kicked out and I couldn't figure out a way to get this back. Our head of strings is supposed to play it at the concert tomorrow night and it,” she gestures at the violin lying on the table between them, “is not there to play.”

“We are going to fix this,” Eliot assures her, making very direct eye contact. Loula visibly relaxes. There's something competent about Eliot, even strangers can tell if he says he's going to do something, he will. If Hardison was the admitting type, he'd maybe admit that does it for him a little. But he's not the admitting type so he's just going to let it fly on by. It really is a good look on Eliot though.

 

“You like when Eliot takes charge,” Parker says to him later, while Eliot is trailing Loula around her, frankly awful, apartment and loudly despairing her lack of general furnishings.

“What? Shh!” Hardison slaps a hand over Parker's mouth and looks around frantically even though he knows Eliot is two rooms away, sounding more and more discouraged with every step.

Parker licks his palm.

“Ew,” Hardison says reproachfully, wiping his hand on his tshirt and making a face at her. She shrugs back, unrepentant.

“You do,” she says, nodding. “I like it too. I like that he takes care of people. Also he's hot.”

“Jesus Parker,” Hardison says, and shuts her up with his mouth. She kisses him back, firm and enthusiastic as always, like she didn't just drop her hots for their coworker and call him out on his thing - that he wasn't acknowledging! - for their coworker. Their...Eliot.

“You like that I like him,” Parker says, eyes shrewd on his face, when Hardison finally pulls away and he just throws his hands up and leaves the room. They have an un-thieving to plan and he cannot deal with this right now.

 

***************

 

“I feel like an idiot,” Eliot hisses over his shoulder. He can see Hardison rolling his eyes but he can't kick back at him like he wants to because they are inside the academy and there are people everywhere. He sees Hardison and Parker peel off in the corner of his vision but keeps walking behind Loula. He's wearing obscenely tight black jeans and an even more obscenely tight black henley.

(“People won't be looking at your face,” Loula had said in the store, eyeing him as he'd backed up into the changing room.)

“Excuse me! Excuse me!!”

“Shit,” Loula mutters under her breath and turns towards the desk she'd been trying to hustle him past. He can see her trying to tuck the violin case behind her, like anyone knows she has a multi million dollar instrument in there and not just a normal one.

There are five people in uniform behind the desk, all watching them.

“You have to sign in,” the one who yelled says in a voice that suggests he says it a lot and is sick to death of having to.

“Apologies,” Eliot says, dropping into character immediately, swaggering over to lean on the desk. “Lev Atlas, contemporary movement.”

Loula nudges him hard in his back but whatever, he's working on the fly here. She had not mentioned a front desk. What kind of college has a front desk?

“Uhh...” The man, whose nametag says LES in bold font, glances at the four other people behind the desk, all of whom immediately look like they have something else to do that does not involve dealing with Eliot.

“If you can wait, I can check the....”

“Hey Les,” Loula says brightly from his side, “I was just taking Mr Atlas down to the drama rooms, he's running really late. Got lost in town.” She makes a face like what can you do and Eliot forces his grin to stay in place.

“Yeah it's a big city you got here,” he says, really drawling his accent. Les blinks at him.

“Of course, but I need to...”

“We're going to be really late,” Loula says, sounding foreboding, “Val will be mad.”

Whoever Val is, she seems to be the magic bullet. Les pales visibly and immediately grabs a binder, flipping it open and writing out a visitor badge. “If Val's waiting,” he says and hands it over.

“Thanks Les, bye!” Loula calls and herds Eliot away from the desk.

“Who the hell is Val?” Eliot mutters at her.

“Runs the drama office. You don't want to cross her.” Loula says and her tone of voice tells Eliot all he needs to know.

Every instituton has a Val. Put in with the bricks it seems, they are the keeper of all the knowledge, friendly until you piss them off and definitely run the place with an iron fist. He's met Val's in businesses all across the continent. He does not want to run into this one.

Loula moves fast, and they're out of sight of the front desk in seconds.

“You didn't mention a desk,” Eliot says, aggrieved, but immediately gets distracted from whatever Loula is hissing back by the girl sitting on the floor, inside what seems to be a square marked out around her with masking tape. She has black curls pushed back from her face with a bright red bandana and she isn't moving, just staring straight ahead.

“Uh, miss? Do you need help?” Eliot asks, stopping completely. The girl doesn't acknowledge him at all. A bunch more students pour from the adjoining corridor and jostle him closer to the marked out space. For some reason he's loathe to invade it.

“What are you doing?” Loula snaps at his back, “Oh hi Emily.”

Emily doesn't acknowledge Loula either but she bursts up suddenly, making Eliot leap backwards, raising her leg up until it's basically by her ear until she's standing on the toes of one foot, arms raised elegantly. None of her limbs left the square.

“What?” Eliot asks as Loula drags him away.

“Contemporary Perfomance,” Loula says and she sounds defensive enough that Eliot shuts up about it.

 

“So,” Loula throws over her shoulder as they walk, “the other two are dating so what does that make you? The third wheel?”

“What? No!” Eliot says, offended. He's no one's third wheel.

“Sugar daddy?” Loula says and even though her tone is genuinely curious, Eliot still bristles.

“No,” he snaps. He misses when people were afraid of him. “We're a team,” he snaps irritably.

Oddly, this makes Loula's eyes go wide with surprise. Eliot narrows his in response.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says, “just surprised. That's pretty modern. Go you guys making it work.”

Eliot squints at her back. He thinks maybe he's missing something.

“So there's no jealousy?” she says after a couple seconds. “I mean, it's not you and her and her and him, it's - ” she laces her fingers together and waggles them at him.

Eliot abruptly gets where she's going with her questions.

“I am not discussing this with you,” he hisses, refusing to react to the amused look she throws back at him. It'll be a cold day in hell before a teenager makes him blush.

“That's not a no,” she says, teasingly.

Before Eliot can come up with a retort that isn't an outright lie, Loula grabs him and shoves him through a door he didn't notice, violin case banging off the back of his knees, where he promptly falls down twelve stairs. He bounces back up at the bottom and shakes himself to make sure nothing is broken. Then he glares at Loula who is still at the top and grinning at him, holding the very precious violin case against her stomach.

“Sorry,” she says, not at all sounding sorry, “I forgot you didn't know about the stairs.”

She follows him down and shoves him further into the room. It's a number of degrees colder than the corridor had been and smells oddly like every old catholic church Eliot had ever been in, all heavy wood polish and something else vaguely floral.

“Where am I supposed to hide exactly?” Eliot asks, gesturing at the completely empty room other than the pipe organ taking up two sides of it. There isn't even a chair.

Loula grins at him and then walks over to the organ, taps a panel that looks exactly like all the other panels and pushes open a tiny hatch.

“Come on then,” she says and crawls through.

Eliot follows her inside and the space on the other side is about as big as the room he just left and just full of the innards of an organ. Pipes make tight corridors that criss cross each other, some of which you have to step over low lying pipes bisecting the narrow space just to pass through.

“There aren't any lessons booked today but stay at the back out of sight in case anyone comes in,” Loula says, and shoves him through the machine, into the back corner and then carefully hands him the violin case, bundling it into his arms like a baby. He fumbles it a little and she gives him a look.

“Careful,” she admonishes, the turns and makes her way back to the hatch.

“Wait, just...” Eliot says desperately but Loula is out and shoving the little hatch closed behind her. His nose is already getting ticklish from the dust they've stirred up.

“Usually I'd hide you under the main stage but it's end of year productions”, she says apologetically over her shoulder, “bye, stay hidden,” and she's gone.

Eliot takes a deep breath before looking around. There's nothing to do except settle in for a long wait. He's good at waiting. It's dull but no one's shooting at him so he'll take it.

 

He's not sure how many hours in he is, only that is ass is utterly numb, when he hears the room door creak open and stills completely. Footsteps move quickly across the floor and Eliot hears the snick of the hatch as it shushes open. He uses his foot to carefully push the violin case futher under some of the machinery, hoping there isn't anything under there that might do a multi million dollar instrument damage. Once it's out of sight, he moves slowly to the edge of his little corridor and peers out.

An older man, dishevelled and with a pouf of grey hair like a candy cloud on top of his head, appears suddenly and not too far from where Eliot is concealed. Eliot freezes, unable to move lest he catch attention, and watches as the man kneels down and feels around under some machinery then gives a little grunt of triumph and pulls out … a plastic bag with a white shirt, a black tie and a pair of extremely shiny black shoes inside.

It's only when he's giving his tie one last straighten that the man looks up at just the wrong angle and spots Eliot watching him. Eliot runs quickly through and discards a number of plans but all of them are proved unnecessary when the man simply raises a finger to his lips, then turns and leaves without saying a word.

“What the fuck,” Eliot mutters quietly to himself. This entire job has been weird from start to finish and he would like it to be over please.

 

***************

 

Parker is having fun. There's party food. It's not Eliot's party food but it's good enough. She stuffs another tiny pastry thing in her mouth. Definitely good enough.

Everyone around her is dressed up in very expensive clothes. Hardison told her she couldn't steal anything buthe didn't say anything about not thinking about it so she was entertaining herself planning all the ways she could pilfer this very boring lady's extremely large, gaudy and expensive diamond necklace.

“Exquisite piece isn't it,” the woman says when she notices Parker's interest. Her tone extremely nasal and Parker wrinkles her own nose in response. “It belonged to my great great grandmother. Very gauche now of course but family heirlooms matter!”

“Excuse us!” Hardison says brightly, appearing on Parker's left, catching her elbow and tugging her away. Parker sees the woman's eyes drop to Hardison's ass and can't stop herself from sticking out her tongue. The woman recoils like Parker has slapped her.

“I wasn't going to steal it,” she says under her breath when Hardison pulls them up sharply and drops an arm over Parker's shoulder, smiling at another group of well dressed people.

“No one said you were,” Hardison says back, easily.

Parker eyes him but he doesn't look shifty and his eyes aren't doing that jumpy thing they do when he's humouring her. Hmm.

“But it's time.”

Hardison spins her, making it look carelessly effortless, until she can see the whole party spread out before them and the Principal at the centre, with his new office key in his pocket, the jewel in the middle of the sea.

Parker moves fast, she always does at this part. She knows this dance. A sly smile here, a hand on the lower back there, a twirl and a fake stumble and she's out the other side, key in hand and no one any the wiser.

Hardison is watching her and his eyes are...huh.

“You like it when I take charge,” she says, tilting her head, something slotting into place in her head. Hardison shifts his eyes quickly.

“No time, let's go,” he says and she lets him lead her to the edge of the room, giving her space to work her magic, weaving in and out, and then they're slipping out of the door, leaving the party behind them.

Loula is already heading down the corridor towards them, towing Eliot and a violin case with her. Eliot's wearing a very nice suit that he hadn't been wearing earlier.

“Come on, quick,” Loula stage-whispers.

Parker doesn't like the way she's holding Eliot's hand. Which is ridiculous because she is far too young for Eliot to care about and that's...huh. More puzzle pieces.

“We should date Eliot,” Parker whispers to Hardison then hauls him up when he stumbles and almost ends up on his face.

“Get it together, Hardison,” Eliot throws over his shoulder.

“Parker, what the hell?” Hardison whispers back, eyes kind of wide.

“You want to, right?” Parker says. She doesn't think she's wrong. She's been noticing for a while, or her brain has been, she just hadn't put it all together. She quickly re-examines all of her evidence. “You do,” she reaffirms, sure now, then adds, “I do too,” incase Hardison didn't know and thought she was just poking at him. Sometimes he gets kind of distant if she tugs on his feelings too hard and she doesn't want him to think it's just him.

“Can we deal with this later?” Hardison asks. The back of his neck has started to flush. Parker presses her fingertips to it and Hardison bats her away.

“Sure,” Parker replies, feeling benevolent now that she knows who wants who. It feels right. They've been a trio pretty much since the beginning. This is a logical step. It makes sense. Parker likes things that make sense.

She's so busy calculating that she stumbles into Hardison's back who, in turn, stumbles into Eliot's. Eliot steadies them both. Parker nods to herself. Eliot always steadies them.

“Security outside the office,” Eliot hisses back and Parker shoves through them to peer around the corner.

It's hardly security. Just one of the front office people from this morning, standing outside the office they need to be inside, looking bored out of his mind.

“I got this,” she says as she breezes past and immediately pretends to be tipsy. This ploy never fails and Parker has used it countless times.

“Miss. Miss!” the man calls from her right.

Parker stumbles a little then turns with a quick flourish that makes her look just the right side of too much champagne.

“Miss, are you lost?” the lone front desk person left to guard an expensive violin that hadn't been there at all, asks her. Parker doesn't even try to hide her smile. She loves subterfuge.

“I'm sorry,” she says in her best ditzy voice, “I can't find the bathroom and I've lost my way.” She adds a giggle for effect. She quite likes the sound so she does it again.

“Here, let me show you,” the man says. His nametag says LES in bold font.

“Thank you, Les,” Parker says loudly, “I really appreciate you walking me to the bathroom. This building is so large! It's so easy to get lost.” She wraps a firm arm around Les's elbow, fingers clamping on, so that he has no choice but to do exactly what she asks.

So easy.

 

“That was the easiest job we've ever pulled,” Eliot says when they meet up ten minutes later in the brightly lit foyer. Waiters are handing out flutes of champagne. Parker grabs two. He sounds vaguely shellshocked, like he's expecting the other shoe to drop. He gets like this sometimes, dips into his head, looking for problems that aren't there.

“Their food was bad,” Parker says loudly, partly out of loyalty and partly to re-engage him. He tilts his head up, a rant about pastry or filling or whatever already on his lips. Parker doesn't actually care, she just likes to listen to his voice so she tips her chin and settles in for the whisper-yelling.

“That was the easiest job we've ever pulled,” Hardison says, before Eliot can get going, dropping in beside them like he always does.

“That's what I said!” Eliot says back.

Parker smiles.

Loula appears on Parker's other side wearing a very cute dress and strappy shoes she definitely wasn't wearing before. She's hand in hand with a tall willowy girl with tight black curls that frame prettily around her face. Now the easiest job they've ever pulled is over, Parker can admit, if just to herself, Loula kind of grows on you.

“Hi! This is Emily. She's sitting with us at the concert!” Loula says.

There's a disturbance in the crowd and Parker looks up to see the Principal heading towards the concert hall. Hardison sees him at the same time and palm-passes the key to Parker who waits until the Principal is within touching distance before gently bumping him and letting the key drop from her hand.

The Principal is already turning to apologise, hand on Parker's upper arm, when the key bounces off the floor by his foot with a tinny gling. Loula kneels down quick as a flash and scoops it up as he watches, pressing it into his hand.

“You dropped this, sir,” she says with an innocent smile. Parker makes a note to tell Sophie that she'd taught her well.

They all watch as the Principal disappears through the now-open hall doors before Loula announces, “come on, we're going to miss the concert,” and leads them in the same direction.

 

The concert hall is very sleek modern lines and bright lights. Parker doesn't like the light wood but she doesn't have to go here so she lets it go.

“I've never heard the Mauri played,” Loula says, bouncing excitedly next to them in the seats. Emily smiles indulgently at her and strokes a thumb across her knuckles. 

“You didn't play it when you had it?” Eliot asks, slouching down so he can mutter quietly enough that they can hear him but Emily, who has been distracted by some students who have stopped on their way to their seats to say hi, can't.

Loula looks at him, aghast.

“No!”

“Liar,” Parker whispers.

Loula turns and glares at her. Parker merely raises an eyebrow. She knows a lie when she hears one and Loula is definitely lying.

“Maybe a little,” Loula admits and her mouth tilts, ever so slightly. Parker likes it. She can see why Sophie likes the kid. “But it's not the same as hearing someone really good play it.”

“Shh!,” Hardison says, “It's starting.”

He's right. The lights dim slowly then a side door swings open and a smartly dressed man with a pouf of grey hair, kind of like a candy cloud, steps smartly onto the stage and opens the case with a flourish.

“Huh,” Eliot says.

Parker leans over to him and whispers, "Me and Hardison want you to date us," then sits back and watches the man on the stage fiddle with the violin.  Eventually, the woman in front of them turns and viciously shushes Eliot's loud sputtering.  She listens as Eliot apologises until the woman is mollified enough to turn back to face the front.

"Parker, what the hell," Eliot whispers back, sounding a littly hysterical.

"Think about it," she replies.

"Think about it!" Eliot repeats sounding a little shrill.  The woman in front gives him a look over her shoulder until he slouches down in his seat.

"Shh, it's starting," Parker says, elbowing him before settling back to enjoy what all the posters around the academy had said was a forty-five minute musical extravaganza.

Forty-five minutes was plenty of time for thinking.

 

******************

 

Loula's apartment is looking much nicer than the last time Sophie called. There's a table, a very nice high end one if Sophie is any judge, an extremely comfortable looking sofa set and a large flatscreen tv Sophie knows there is no way Loula bought for herself.

“Eliot's been looking out for her,” Parker says proudly.

“What?” Eliot turns from where he's unpacking a brand new high end pan set and placing each one in a sink of soapy water. “No, I haven't.”

Sophie really really misses them.

“Hey Soph!” Loula says, popping in around the doorframe. Sophie can see her fingers are tangled up with someone elses but can't see who. Interesting.

“Lou! Darling! How are you?”

“Good!” Loula nods back, “Thanks for the save. Again.”

Sophie waves her away.

“Nothing to it,” she insists, like everyone in the room didn't already know she would go to the ends of the earth for any of them. It was one thing to know it but it was terribly embarrassing to admit it willy-nilly.

“Okay, bye!” Loula says and disappears back out of the door.

“Young love,” Sophie sighs and does not miss the way Hardison chokes on his drink. “How did it go?” she asks.  She watches them, intrigued by the way Parker is hovering between Hardison and Eliot now that she's looking.

“Easiest job ever,” Hardison and Eliot say at the same time. Eliot sounds suspcious. Sophie can't help but laugh.

“Easy is good,” she says and Eliot grunts. Sophie doesn't miss the way Hardison runs a hand over Eliot's shoulder or the way Eliot eases. Or the pleased look Parker throws at Hardison.

Interesting.

“So, are you coming home or are you sampling more delights of the British Isles?”

“Loula's taking us to Edinburgh,” Parker says immediately, “they have crown jewels there.” She leans close to the screen and whispers conspiratorially, “they're very hard to steal.”

“We're not stealing them,” Hardison and Eliot say in unison.

“We'll put them back,” Parker says sulkily but it's clear she's just riling the boys up with no real intent.

“No,” Eliot says.

Sophie sits back and listens to them squabble.

“How are the three?” Nate's voice asks, tinny through the earpiece nestled under her hair.

“Oh, they're definitely sleeping together,” Sophie says.

There's a distant crash and a lot of swearing.

Sophie smiles.

Perfect.

 


End file.
